carolina. here the story of the pandemic not like any other happening right now in our country. that's because south carolina just reported our country's very first cases of that south african virus variant. one of the cases right here in the low country region of the state. coming up, i will talk to a member of the state's department of health about how quickly this thing may have spread. first, in the last few hours, johnson & johnson releasing information about its vaccine candidate. it's 72% effective in the united states. folks, this vaccine is different. it's one shot, not two. and it also does not need to be kept in those near freezing temperatures like the other two. any moment now, we should hear more about this vaccine news and the new virus variant from the white house covid-19 response team.

a live look there. we will take you there live just as soon as it starts. right now though, the word of the moment is vaccine. i'm at a football stadium that's part of the charleston county school district. it's the second largest in this state. they are ready to give their teachers the vaccine just as soon as the state gives the green light. already some people in the state getting their vaccines at drive-thru sites which presents its own set of challenges. we will talk about that and learn about an ingenious solution from mount pleasant's mayor. it includes an unlikely ally, chick-fil-a. more on that in a moment. we will start in charleston county. the school district is ready to roll out vaccines to its teachers. first, they need the green light from the state. i want to bring in jeff buroey. he is the chief operating officer in the school district.

50,000 students. jeff, first of all, i will put my mask on. we might be within the six feet here. let's just start with the teachers. again, south carolina in phase one. phase two will include teachers. is the school district ready once you get the green light to get the shots in arms? >> we are absolutely ready. we have site immunization plans ready to go. we have nurses that can deliver the shots. we have a logistics team that is ready to support. we need the vials and we are ready to give the shots. >> this is one of the school districts where the students have been in class the entire time. you never went to full remote learning. how were you able to pull that off? >> a lot of work done this past summer into the fall. we have great partnerships with our department of health and environmental control and local medical providers, especially the medical university of south carolina. it's a whole building plan. it's like a football defense.

you have layers. you have your line, linebackers, defensive backs. it's more layers than that. we have hugely effective air handling systems. we have increased fresh air. upgraded filters. we have plexiglas. teachers have their own portable sneeze guard. they can move around the classroom. we put in more than 60 miles of plexiglas among student desks among many other things. >> what is the percentage of students you have coming full-time for in-person? >> we are over 30,000 in-person. 14,000 remote. it's the parents' choice at this point. we have been in school, like you said, since the beginning in september, five days a week, pre-k through 12th grade. >> we have to go to this briefing now. dr. walensky speaking. let's listen in. >> 27,626 deaths have been reported since january 22nd -- through january 22nd, 2020.

during the week of january 21 to january 27, the seven-day average number of deaths increased 7.5% to 3,277 per day. yesterday we saw our sixth day of over 4,000 deaths. we continue to remain concerned about the emergence of variants in the united states and are rapping up surveillance as we work to monitor and identify variants as they emerge. any information we have we will share with you as rapidly as possible. the b-117 variant detected in the uk has now been confirmed in 379 cases in 29 states as of january 27th. yesterday, south carolina public health officials notified the public about the first two documented cases of the b-1351 variant, first detected in south africa and now in the united

states. these cases were identified in different parts of the state and not believed to be epidemiology linked. we are learning more. earlier this week, minnesota identified the first u.s. case of the p-1 variant. this is a variant that originally emerged in brazil. cdc will continue communicating with international, state and local partners to monitor the presence and impact of variants in the united states and around the world. we are actively working with national reference laboratories, state health departments and researchers across the country to improve our understanding of the variants and how they -- it may impact the pandemic. we also know viruses mutate. they tend to mutate in ways that are advantageous to the virus. we expected this. this is why i feel compelled to underscore for you the need for

each of us to remain steadfast in our commitment to taking all of the appropriate steps to protect ourselves and our communities. you are going to hear me say this a lot. here it is. wear a mask. stay six feet apart. avoid crowds and poorly ventilatd spaces. now is not the time to travel. if you choose to travel, please follow the cdc guidelines and be aware that you must wear a mask as you travel. when it is your turn, roll up your sleeve and get vaccinated. if we do all of these things, there is less virus spreading and the conditions can -- that produce variants can lessened. before i turn it over to dr. fauci, i would like to just address school reopenings, which i know has been in the news a lot this week. cdc continues to recommend that k through 12 schools be the last setting to close after all other

mitigations measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can safely. accumulating data school setting dozen not result in rapid spreading when mitigation measures are followed, including masking, decreasing density and proper ventilation. implementing community-based strategy that reduce transmission is also important to supporting the safe reopening of schools. we recognize many communities lack sufficient capacity to do all that is needed. that is why it is essential that the guidance, tools and resources called for in the national strategy for the covid-19 response and the american rescue plan are provided to communities. thank you. i look forward to taking your questions in a few minutes. i will turn it over to dr. fauci. dr. fauci? >> thank you very much, dr. walensky. as alluded to by andy slavitt,

this past week and particularly the past 24 hours have been really interesting. i think value added to the issue of vaccine protection in the government attempt to contain this outbreak. in previous briefings, i had mentioned that the federal government had been involved in the development and/or facilitation of three separate platforms of vaccines. one was the mrna. other were vector and the other was the soluble proteins. we know now of the recent data that came with regard to moderna and pfizer with their mrna showing a 94% to 95% efficacy. a very, very good efficacy against advanced or severe disease. over the last 24 hours, there have been the announcements of

two other trials that represent two additional platforms. one is the soluble protein platform in a study that came out of the uk using, from the company novavax and the other one that we discussed this morning at a press conference at the nih was the janssen or johnson & johnson trial that took place in the united states in south africa and in brazil. the results really are very encouraging. let me just very briefly outline for you, and then maybe make a couple of comments regarding nuances of the study. in the study that was just reported by janssen, it was a trial using the ad-26. the efficacy in the study was 66%. but for the united states, it

was 72%. the important issue, because the first thing people do is compare a 72% efficacy with the previously reported in other trials of 94% to 95%. that is true. but when one looks at the potential impact on a very important aspect of what we look at carefully is namely severe disease that overall in the united states, in south africa and in brazil, the overall efficacy for severe disease was 85%. in fact, in the study, including in the south african isolate, there were essentially no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccine group. in the placebo group, there were. this really tells us that we have now a value added additional vaccine candidate that will, of course, as happens

with every candidate, will present the details of their data to the fda. i want to point out that this has important potential and real implications both domestically and globally, because as many of you are aware of, this is a single shot vaccine in which you start to see efficacy anywhere from seven to ten days following the first and only shot. it is very, very good with regard to cold chain requirements, namely requiring only a refrigerator. it is inexpensive and the company is capable of making doses in the numbers of billions. of note -- this is something that relates to what dr. walensky just said -- we are being faced with variants. we are all aware of the variants that we knew dominated in the uk, the 117, 351 in south africa

and other variants such as the p-1 in brazil. when these variants were first recognized, it became clear that we had to look at in vitro, in the test tube, whether the antibodies that were induced by the vaccines that we had available would actually neutralize these new mutants. it was reported in several pre-print journals over the past couple of weeks that although it diminished, particularly the troublesome south african isolate, although it diminished the efficacy of the antibodies, it still was not below the cutoff where you would expect some degree of efficacy. what we know now from this study, namely the j&j and the novavax study, that variation, ie, mutations that lead to different lineage, do have

clinical consequences. because as you can see, even though the long range affect in the sense of severe disease is still handled reasonably well by the vaccines, this is a wake-up call that we will be dealing, as the virus uses its devices to evade pressure, particularly immunology pressure, that we will see the evolution of mutants. that means that we, as a government, the companies, all of us that are in this together, will have to be nimble to be able to just adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine that actually are specifically directed towards whatever mutation is actually prevalent at any given time. finally, this all tells us that it is an incentive to do what we have been saying all along, to vaccinate as many people as we

can as quickly as we possibly can. because mutations occur, because the virus has a playing field, as it were, to mutate. if you stop that and stop the c mutate if they don't replicate. that's the reason to continue to do what we're doing. namely, intensify our ability and our implementation to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible. now i will hand it back to andy slavitt. andy? >> thank you, dr. fauci. before i turn it over to all of you for questions, i want to offer a few updates and a sense of the action and activities and our progress against executing our plan to defeat covid-19. one of the core elements of our plan is accelerating the process of vaccinating the country to protect people from covid-19 as quickly and as safely as possible.

for the past week, our seven-day average number of shots administers was 1.2 million per day. we view this number of 1 million doses per day as a base to build from in the coming days, weeks and months. in total, we have now delivered 48 million doses and 26 million of those doses have been administered. as i have said before, we are facing two challenges. the first is increasing the supply of vaccines safely and more rapidly and speeding up the time it takes to administer them efficiently and importantly equitably. i want to call out seven states that have provided first vaccinations to more than 10% of their adult populations. alaska, west virginia, new

mexico, connecticut, north dakota, oklahoma and south dakota. well done. we have taken steps to announce last week that we will increase supply week over week by 16% and vastly improve the predictability of ordering vaccines by giving everyone a three-week forward window into how many vaccines they will be getting delivered. we announced plans to purchase 200 million additional vaccines which means that no matter what happens with other approvals, we will have sufficient supply to vaccinate the country. we are also taking steps to speed the vaccination administration process. at the president's direction, fema has increased its support to states, tribes and

territories for vaccination sites. fema is providing nearly $1 billion to support vaccination sites in states and territories. more than 200 fema staff members are on the ground today providing logistical support in eight states. and the agency is providing federal equipment and supplies to support states across the country. in addition, we are getting more vaccinators into the field to continue to escalate the pace of vaccinations. yesterday, the department of health and human services amended the prep act. declaration to permit recently retired doctors and nurses to administer covid-19 vaccines. to permit anyone currently licensed to vaccinate within their home state. that's doctors, nurses, emts, to be able to administer shots across state lines. we are looking at every possible

step to make it easier to get more vaccinations out in the field. we encourage individuals to contact their local and state health departments, local medical reserve corps unit to sign up to volunteer if they are qualified. today the acting health and human services secretary will continue the activation. he is requested public health service officers to support national covid-19 vaccination efforts. i want to touch on our efforts to make the workplace safer. the department of labor announced that its occupational safety and health administration has issued stronger worker safety guidance to help employers and workers implement a coronavirus mitigation program and better identify risks which could lead to exposure and infection. ensuring the health and safety of all of our country's workers

is a national priority and a moral and economic imperative. health care workers and other essential workers, many of whom are people of color, immigrants, have put their lives on the line during the coronavirus pandemic. this updated guidance provides a road map for businesses to protect the health of the workers. one of the purposes of these briefings is to demonstrate the transparency that's within our national plan. so i want to close by mentioning some of the steps we are taking to improve public access, the information they should have at their fingertips to stay safe. this week, we release previously non-public data on the pandemic trends across all 50 states in detail. this detailed information was previously reserved solely for

governors and it is now available to everybody to see. these will be weekly reports publically posted online. our team is working hard to make the process more transparent and easier for the public to understand beginning with these briefings and the very clear messages from dr. walensky and dr. fauci. let me turn and spend the balance of our time taking questions for dr. walensky, dr. fauci and myself. >> thanks, andy. right now we have time for a couple of questions. if you have not already, you can go ahead and raise your hand on the zoom feature. first up, we will go to christopher "the washington post." >> thanks for doing the briefing. i was wondering, what percentage of the administration kits now are being sent out with the

pfizer vaccine contain the specialized units, how many millions more to get to 100% and what companies are being ordered to procure more under the dpa? on the state allotments and pfizer's credit, are state allotments based on five doses in the vial or six? is pfizer getting credit for all six? >> thanks for the question. at risk of somebody coming back and correcting my answer, i believe the answer is 100%. they are getting credit for six because everybody should now have the tools to be able to get the sixth dose out. that's thanks to the work of our dpa and supply chain team. next question. >> next we will go to caitlyn collins at cnn. >> thank you. i have two questions. one on the new variants that we are seeing. the expectation seems to be they

could start to have an impact on cases by march, maybe gain a foothold by april and become the dominant cases that we are seeing. what specifically is the administration doing to stop that from happening beyond recommending that people social distance and wear masks? >> let me turn first to dr. fauci to talk about the science behind these variants and what is likely to happen or what we believe. then to dr. walensky after that so she can discuss the actions we are taking as a country and the actions we expect americans to take to help with your question. thank you. >> there are a number of variants that we are concerned about. one that is quite well established already in the united states, and that is the 117 that is in about 28 or 29 states and more than 315 cases that have all been reported.youe

a virus that has ability to transmit more efficiently than the wild type in the community, sooner or later by pure viral dynamics itself, it will become more dominant than the wild type. we have that already there. we have a situation where there have been reported in very specific places in south carolina, for example, the isolate or mutant that is the 351 from dominant in south africa. again, that seems to have a very good fitness for spread. so whether or not that's going to ultimately take over in the sense of being dominant is unclear by now. the projection that is made with regard to the uk is that probably by the end of march, beginning of april, it actually

will become more dominant in this country. as i mentioned at the very end of my remarks, i will leave it to in a moment to dr. walensky to talk a bit about what we are doing from a surveillance and other standpoint. the fundamental priniple of getting people vaccinated as quickly and efficiently will be the best way to prevent the further evolution of any mutant, because when you do that, you prevent replication and replication is essential for mutation. over to you, dr. walensky. >> thank you, dr. fauci. for that question also. there are numerous things we are doing. as dr. fauci noted, the prevention, mitigation measures for variants are exactly the same regardless what variant you have. we have scaled up surveillance dramatically in the last ten days. our plans for scaling up surveillance are more than what we have done so far.

we have partnerships with commercial labs. we are asking surveillance from every single state, at least 750 surveillance strings per week. we have seven collaborations across universities to scale up surveillance to the thousands per week so that we can get a foothold to see whether these projections of having this take hold by the middle of march or late -- middle to late march are actually true. what we are doing is offering support to the states that have identified these surveillances, specifically south carolina with the 351 variant reaching out to help with vaccination as vaccination is one of the things we need to do. with resources for increased testing, increased surveillance as well as increased resources for vaccination and funding. we are working hard to make sure that we can do the mitigation measures, do the vaccination, do surveillance. we have across agency

collaboration with cdc, nih, dod so when we get these strains, we can do the science and understand the impact of these variants on our vaccines as well as on our therapeutics. >> let me add one more comment. if we as a country want to turbo charge our efforts as sequencing, which i believe should be a shared bipartisan perspective, we can do that. what we need is the congress to quickly pass the american rescue plan, which contains the resources necessary to get all of our very, very talented people around the country who are world experts at sequencing to get on this as quickly as possible. i couldn't urge people to -- people in congress to be more focused on the american rescue plan than i can given the state of the variants. >> if i could make one more point. that is that by the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a

positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity for doing real case control and contact tracing is largely gone. i think -- i believe that we should be treating every case as if it's a variant during this pandemic right now. >> thank you for the question. next. >> great. now we will go to ed o'keefe at cbs. ed, you can speak. ed, we will try to come back to you. in the meantime, let's go to

caroline chen. >> hi. thanks for taking my question. this is a question for both dr. walensky and dr. fauci. when epidemiologists talk about herd immunity, they say 70% or 80% of the population is the goal. given that 20% of the u.s. population is children, do you think it's important to have eligibility expanded to children for vaccination as soon as possible? if so, what is being done to get to that goal? >> that's a very good question. in the candidates that we are talking about now, certainly the moderna and pfizer, the two that have been given, we have started on what's called an age deescalation testing. what that means, that you start off, for example, we know with one of the vaccines, it's 16 and then one is 18 years old. we go down from 16 to 12. from 12 to 9. what you do, because you don't

want to have to -- i will explain why in a moment. to go through an efficacy trial where you are involving tens of thousands of children to show efficacy. what you can do is in a much smaller trial measured in hundreds to a couple of thousands, to do what we call safety and a phase 2a. if you can show it's safe and has response reflective of the protection, what you can do is then bridge that to the efficacy data that you got from the 30,000 trial with moderna and the 44,000 trial that we did with pfizer. in direct answer to your question, over the next couple of months, we will be doing trials in an age deescalation manner so that hopefully by the time we get to the late spring and early summer, we will have

children being able to be vaccinated according to the fda's guidance. >> thank you. >> dr. walensky, do you want to add? >> our current data from schools from summer calm suggest children not only have decreased rates of symptoms but decreased rates of transmissibility. the estimates are based on rates of transmission. what pertains to herd immunity among adults may be different among children. >> next question. >> we have time for two more. we are going to go to sharon lefanier at "new york times." >> thank you. can you hear me? >> yes. >> dr. fauci said that we are going to have to make new versions of the existing vaccines to combat the variants. the vaccine makers have shown they can design vaccines.

where is the extra manufacturing capacity going to come from? aren't the vaccine makers already tapped out making the existing vaccines? what's the plan for making revised vaccines and booster shots on top of that? >> thanks for the question. i think this question speaks to a larger issue. i think you could have asked that different ways. that's contingency planning. we have enough space and manufacturing to make adjustments on the fly. i would tell you that the department of health and human services, the fda, the team are hard at work answering all of those questions. i will not use these briefings to talk about non-public information about specific companies. all i can tell you is those are exactly the right factors that we are thinking about.

i think to make a broader point, the team work between everybody here, between the nih, the cdc, the fda and then our ability to understand what those factors are and turn it into actual actionable plans with the manufacturers is really important. i have been impressed at least so far with that. >> great. we will send our last question to yanish at pbs. >> you cut off. >> hi. thanks so much for taking my question. can you hear me? >> yes, i can. >> i have two questions. the first is, it sounded like you were saying we are vaccinating about a million people daily. i wonder if you can talk about what the goal would be, the average goal would be and how quickly we ramp up to that average, what would be a better

average? then i have a second question after that. >> well, our seven-day average is 1.2 million per day. as i said, we view where we are today as a floor, not a ceiling. what we have tasked our team with as many vaccines as possible into as many arms as possible. there are two constraints right now. the first is just continuing week after week to press to increase production and find opportunities as they exist. that is a slow process. that doesn't happen overnight. the second, where i think there is opportunity, is to turn those vaccines produced into actual vaccinations more rapidly. we have a number of steps to do that. i'm not going to put out a different number today on what i would like to see other than to tell you that every day when the number comes out, all of us are awaiting the number and looking for as high a number as possible, of course. i know you have another question.

>> i wanted to ask about the two-thirds of cases in los angeles county, it's been reported, came out in the last two months, have been reported in the last two months. one study said the factor was this recent coronavirus surge of a new variant. what more do we know about the l.a. variant? what does that tell us about other big cities? should we expect maybe a new york, a new orleans variant? how does -- what is l.a. teaching us about what big cities might be experiencing? >> thank you. dr. fauci, do you want to take that? >> sure. what it tells us is what i alluded to in one of my prior comments. when you have a significant amount -- we have that and have had that very much so over the past couple of months with the very steep slope of acceleration of cases that we have seen, is that the virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its

own selective advantage. if you have a lot of cases in los angeles and you have this mutant that you refer to, you can be almost certain that as long as there's a lot of virus circulating in the community, there will be the evolution of mutants, because that's what viruses do. particularly rna viruses. that's what i was referring to just a moment ago. you are giving the virus an opportunity to adapt. when people make an immune response against it, particularly in someone like that might be immunosuppressed, where the virus stays in a longer period of time, it gives the virus the chance to adapt to the forces in this case, the immune response, that's trying to get rid of it. that's where you get mutations. if the question you were asking, which is very relevant, is that what do we think is happening in other cities, i think what the underlying issues that are going on in california and los angeles

very likely are taking place throughout the country, which is one of the reasons why, as dr. walensky said, that we are ratcheting up our genome surveillance capability and ability to get that information in real time. >> dr. walensky, anything you would like to add? >> no. i think we got it. >> i think what we are saying collectively is, let's not be quite such polite hosts to this virus. let's turn the tide and do like other countries who will do everything possible to shut out the growth of this virus and make sure it's not welcome. thank you all for attending the briefing. i hope that this is useful to you. we intend to continue to do these every monday, wednesday and friday. the same group. we will bring others on as well. if you have any feedback -- >> okay. we have been listening to the new covid-19 response team

there. lots of information. lots of news. we are going to get one of these briefings from the white house, it would seem, every monday, wednesday and friday. let's bring in medical contributor dr. natalie azar who has been listening along with me over the last 30 minutes or so. among the headlines here, dr. fauci there calling the johnson & johnson vaccine encouraging. overall, it is 72% effective in this country. what's most encouraging to you about this vaccine? >> well, certainly, craig, it's going to be important for the u.s. arsenal. but i think it probably is really something that's going to be important more globally. the reason is that it is relatively easier to produce. it is inexpensive. it doesn't require that cold chain distribution that other

vaccines do. and it's only one shot. think about this on a more international scale in countries that are in warmer climates, for example. low economic, third world countries, that's going to make a big difference. even if we get the virus under control in this country, if it's not handled globally, that still is going to be an issue for all of us. the top line results include this 85% efficacy in preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death. as dr. fauci pointed out, at the end of 28 days, nobody in the vaccine group died. that's exceptional. that's important to get this pandemic under control. you need people to not be in the hospital and not die. >> we heard at the beginning of the briefing from dr. walensky that nationwide the daily rate right now, four times where we were this past summer.

hospitalizations are down, by and large. how can both of those things be true? >> first of all -- i'm basing my interpretation of that and my commentary on what some of the most notable public health experts, particularly dr. osterholm says, don't get too complacent or too encouraged by the decrease in the hospitalizations, because look where we are going in terms of our baseline. we are not dropping down to 40,000 a day. we are just dropping down a little bit. in all likelihood, those numbers are going to go up as well. just by sheer number, as soon as you have a more contagious bug or more transmissible bug, the number of hospitalizations will increase. remember, if younger people are getting sick and if the variant, for example, is not as virulent, they may not end up in the

hospital. it's one metric, but it's not science. >> thank you. president biden, vice president harris at the white house, getting an economic briefing with treasury secretary janet yellen. let's listen. >> advisors to former president trump and george bush. i have been meeting all morning with other folks as well. the notion here is we would have to act now. there's no time for any delay. so we can end up with 4 million fewer jobs according to a wall street firm. it could take a year longer to return to full employment if we don't act and don't act now. we could see an entire cohort of kids with a lower lifetime earnings because they are deprived of another semester of school. millions of parents and maybe

some of you, millions of parents are, particularly moms, are forced to stay home, reducing the family wages. if they are a single wage earner, it's difficult. future job prospects that they have no choice but to stay home and take care of their children. millions of people are out of work, unemployed, future millions are held back for no good reason other than our failure to act. the choice couldn't be clearer. we have learned from past crises, the risk is not doing too much. the risk is not doing enough. this is the time to act now. i have asked secretary yellen to come in and we will go into some detail among ourselves. i think she has a statement to make as well. >> thank you, very much, mr. president. there is a huge amount of pain in our economy right now. it was evident in the data

released yesterday. over a million people applied for unemployment insurance last week. that's far more than in the worst week of the great recession. economies agree that if there's not more help, many more people will lose their small businesses, the roofs over their heads and the ability to feed their families. we need to help those people before the virus is brought under control. the president's american rescue plan will help millions of people make it to the other side of this pandemic. it will also make some smart investments to get our economy back on track. i want to emphasize the president is absolutely right. the price of doing nothing is much higher than the price of doing something and doing something big. we need to act now.

the benefits of acting now and acting big will far outweigh the costs in the long run. >> mr. president, what do you think of the johnson & johnson results? >> i'm waiting to hear from my team. i haven't had a chance to speak with dr. fauci. one point i want to make that the secretary made, let's get this straight, it's not only that people will be badly, badly hurt if we don't pass this package in terms of increased rate of death, poverty, a whole range of things. we will also be hurt long term economically. we need to make these investments so the economy can grow the remainder of this year and next year. investment now will help the

economy grow. it will not put a drag on the economy on spending this money. it will do the opposite. thank you very much. >> did you discuss gamestop? >> okay. this was just a few moments ago there at white house. the president, vice president and the new treasury secretary, janet yellen, giving an update on the economy. we will continue to follow that throughout course of the day here at msnbc. back here on the ground in south carolina, you may have heard jokes. if the folks who run the chick-fil-a drive-thru could run the vaccine lines, things would be smoother. one south carolina mayor actually did it. he will join me next to talk about how it worked out. as a retired weatherman, i like things i can predict. that's why i chose an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan from unitedhealthcare. it's the kind of plan with predictable out-of-pocket costs. plus the plan i chose has a low

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not onlythe director of cdc said it's probably infecting more people as we speak. >> one of the concerning things is that we know these two people did not know one another and that they did not travel to south africa. the presumption is that there has been community spread of this strain. >> i want to bring in dr. brenda traxler. thanks for your time this morning. i know how busy you are. we heard dr. walensky is presuming this new variant is spread within the community here in south carolina. how much spread could we be talking about? >> well, we are seeing high numbers of cases of covid-19 in south carolina. however, i do want to emphasize we have been doing surveillance sequencing in our state for months, going back to last

summer, as well as working with the cdc and other labs. these are the two first cases of this variant that have been identified. we will be working, continuing to work with the cdc to do more enhanced surveillance, further testing to get a better idea potentially how much there is. >> the two individuals who presented this new strain, what can you tell me about their condition? they doing okay? >> yes, yes. both have done fine and have recovered. >> they are outside the period of contagiousness, is that right? >> that is correct. they and their close contacts at this point are no longer contagious. >> a few moments ago we heard the white house covid-19 response team, the response team said that vaccinating as many people as possible as soon as possible is key, especially with this new variant. what can south carolina do to make that happen? >> what we are doing is exactly

what we need to be doing. we have increased our pipeline of providers who can give vaccines. working with our agency at the labor, licensing and regulation. some of the medical boards as well as we have expanded the number of people authorized to give vaccinations. we have enrolled hundreds of providers who want to provide the vaccine. as soon as we have enough flow coming into the state to be able to get it to them. we are prepared. we are ready. we are getting shots in arms. we just need to get more vaccine. >> doctor, your department has said there's no evidence the south african variant is deadlier. existing vaccines could still offer protection against it. if that's the case, how worried should folks really be? >> folks need to remain diligent. they need to use this as a

reminder of how important it is to do those small things that mean big differences. wearing a mask, physical distancing, hand hygiene, avoiding large crowds or group gatherings when possible. then, of course, of course when it is their turn and it is available to them, getting vaccinated. that is going to be a key part of preventing the spread of covid-19 of all the versions of it. >> before i let you go, there seems to be growing consensus that kids might actually be relatively safe going back to in-person class as long as they take safety precautions. we heard that from the new head of the cdc. dr. fauci said so. the medical university of south carolina, not far from where i am said so. 1% of the students and staff in charleston county public schools tested positive for covid-19 between the start of in-person school in early september and

winter break. i'm curious how much you share their optimism, especially in light of this new data? >> i do their share optimism. we have seen that these school districts and schools are really putting those protective mechanisms into place, encouraging masking and so forth. and we have not seen evidence of a large amount of spread of the virus within the schools, within the classrooms. so it can be done safely. >> dr. traxler, thanks for your time. good luck to you. >> thank you, sir. >> here in south carolina, some residents are getting their vaccines at drive-through sites, but we all know how long those lines can get. that's a problem that the mayor of mt. pleasant was facing at local drive-through site, so he called in a professional for help. that person, a local chick-fil-a manager who assisted drivers,

handed out vaccine paperwork, and sped up the hour wait time to just under 15 minutes. i'm joined by that mayor, will haney of mt. pleasant, south carolina. what made you call on the chick -- chick-fil-a manager to help you out? >> who else would you call when you have to have drive-through? you call chick-fil-a. that's who came to the rescue and we owe them a debt of gratitude in mt. pleasant. >> have you shared what you learned at that location with other drive-through sites around the state with other mayors? >> i haven't gotten calls from other mayors, but you can bet as we continue to roll these out in our town, we're going to do it jerry's way, and he will be there. this was the pfizer vaccine, so he'll be there on the 12th, you know, for the 21-day follow-up. so we're going do it right.

>> talk about the demand that you're seeing for the vaccine, mayor. do you have enough supply to keep up in mt. pleasant? >> well, you know, it's a day-to-day thing. i heard one of our hospitals -- by the way, shout-out to the medical university, east roper medical center and another came to us. heard yesterday one of those hospitals is only getting 150 doses for next week. that doesn't do it for a town of 93,000 people. we're very concerned about the supply. then we found out that south carolina's going to get 10,000 more per week, which is good, so we are planning more drive-throughs in mt. pleasant and we will do it the chick-fil-a way. >> what is it about their process? how are they able to shave, if my math is right, some 75% off the time? what did they do? >> well, we had the best

intentions and we were set up and i didn't answer your question about demand. 1,032 people signed up in a matter of hours to come get this. so that's the kind of demand we had. they were all in a software system and when we went to open up the software crashed, so that's what caused the backlog, and there's when i called jerry with chick-fil-a on long point road, and he came over, saw the bottleneck and said to fix this and get back to speed, you have to get more of your rotary volunteers. you see one in the yellow vest. that's sandy. she helped organized all the rotary volunteers. he doubled up with them and had them move down the line, because you know when you get to chick-fil-a, you don't wait till you get to the window. people come to you when you pull in. jerry trained our volunteers and it was down to a 15-minute wait in a matter of minutes.

>> whatever you did, it seemed to work. mayor, thank you. thanks for your time and hospitality. be well. have a great weekend. >> my pleasure. >> we have some breaking news here on this friday morning. new york governor andrew cuomo just added new york city to the list of areas that can resume indoor dining at 25%. that is going to happen according to the governor, on valentine's day. again, that breaking news coming in just a few moments ago. one reason i'm here in north charleston, south carolina, is to bring you the incredible story of henry darby. he's a high school principal by day and he's a walmart associate by night. every dime he wakes at walmart, though, that second job that he picked up, every dime goes to help his students with their basic needs. 90% of his student body at his

high school, north charleston, 90% live below the poverty line and the pandemic has hit this community especially hard. >> i get a little emotional because when you've got children, you've heard sleep under the bridge or a former student and her child sleeping in a car or when you go to a parent house because there's problems and you knock on the door, there are no curtains and just a mattress on the floor, and these people need -- i wasn't going to say no. >> he did not. his community is the better for it. we'll leave you on this friday with a real hero, henry darby, principal of north charm ston charleston high school high school. he does all of this for just one thing in return -- he asks that his students pay it forward. that does it for me in south

carolina on another busy friday. "andrea mitchell reports" starts after a short break. on monday, andrea will be talking exclusively with the new secretary of state antony blinken. ♪♪ [ engines revving ] ♪♪ it's amazing to see them in the wild like th-- shhh. [ engine revs ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. my nunormal: fewer asthma attacks. less oral steroids. taking my treatment at home. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden breathing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occurred.

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ultimately take over in the sense of being dominant is unclear by now. >> by the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a positive result, and we get the sequence, our opportunity for doing real case control and